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Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

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Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#91

Post by sfRattan »

andrewflnr wrote: post #87
sfRattan wrote: post #60

My brother and I made up a version of Magic as kids where all the mana is laid out sideways in staggered rows between the players, creating a sort of hex grid landscape. You drew and played from your deck, but placed cards on the "map" created by the mana on the board, only where the adjacent mana matched their cost, and moved around attacking each other. Six adjacencies meant cards could cost up to seven and work in…

Interesting. I've been kicking around the idea of designing a similar game (probably in computer format tbh), specifically with the idea of mana being geographically located in a hex grid. Any ideas for a more balanced version, or other thoughts about it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be curious to hear more details.

It was mostly unbalanced because Magic: The Gathering wasn't designed with movement, range, or position in mind. So there were all kinds of effects interactions that didn't make sense and we always had to rule things on the fly. And there were definitely arguments about which cards should be faster or slower.

Other games to look at include the Undaunted [1] series by Osprey Games:

- They use deckbuilding-esque mechanics to simulate squad level combat in WWII.

- They also have staggered tiles creating a hex-like board. When I first saw undaunted I thought, "oh, I did that years ago with Mana cards!"

- There are little punch out tokens representing the cards in your deck. Who you have in your hand each turn represents who you can give orders to on the board.

[1]: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/63557/series-undau...

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#92

Post by andrewflnr »

sfRattan wrote: post #91
andrewflnr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I've been kicking around the idea of designing a similar game (probably in computer format tbh), specifically with the idea of mana being geographically located in a hex grid. Any ideas for a more balanced version, or other thoughts about it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be curious to hear more details.

It was mostly unbalanced because Magic: The Gathering wasn't designed with movement, range, or position in mind. So there were all kinds of effects interactions that didn't make sense and we always had to rule things on the fly. And there were definitely arguments about which cards should be faster or slower. Other games to look at include the Undaunted [1] series by Osprey Games: - They use deckbuilding-esque mechan…

Gotcha. Hopefully I'll fare better designing it from scratch with that format in mind!

Thanks for the reference too. There doesn't seem to be a lot of data on that page but I'll look into it as far as I can.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#93

Post by sfRattan »

andrewflnr wrote: post #92
sfRattan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was mostly unbalanced because Magic: The Gathering wasn't designed with movement, range, or position in mind. So there were all kinds of effects interactions that didn't make sense and we always had to rule things on the fly. And there were definitely arguments about which cards should be faster or slower. Other games to look at include the Undaunted [1] series by Osprey Games: - They use deckbuilding-esque mechan…

Gotcha. Hopefully I'll fare better designing it from scratch with that format in mind! Thanks for the reference too. There doesn't seem to be a lot of data on that page but I'll look into it as far as I can.

It's BoardGameGeek's aggregation of all the games in the Undaunted series. You have to click on the specific games (e.g. Undaunted: Normandy or Undaunted: Battle of Britain) to get the detailed info on each.

Edit: in the "Linked Games" tab.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#94

Post by furyofantares »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #88

> Here is a list of things that make a game of Magic The Gathering fun to us. > No Discard. It sucks to have no spells to play. List of black deck: three Hypnotic Specter cards. Common...

As well as Armageddon (well, Ravages of War) violating the no land destruction, and Balance violating both.

I'm in favor of it though.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#95

Post by netbioserror »

The most fun I have playing Magic is a "Reasonable Cube" sealed draft:

Buy or make a cube with a very normal distribution of cards, nothing crazy (I bought a cube made by Card Kingdom some time ago). There will be 90 spells per each of 4 players. Shuffle the whole deck, and deal out the 90 per player. Now you simply make 40 card decks, typically with ~25 spells each. There will be lots of wiggle room for sideboards or even side decks. Then run a little tournament.

The games are usually that ideal Magic scenario: Nail-biting back and forth gameplay, where anything powerful has a cost and games come down to the wire.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#96

Post by ticulatedspline »

lukifer wrote: post #46
snikeris wrote: post #30

This is my favorite alternative form of Magic: https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/the-danger-room/ "I have a feeling that roughly 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too few lands, 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too many lands, 25% of games are decided by a player having a legitimate bomb not get answered immediately, and the last 25% of games are the ones that everybody hopes for wher…

My biggest beef with Magic isn't the lands system, but that the game is fundamentally stingy with cards, leading to many non-games, and/or turns where you pray for the right top-deck and don't get it. (This is one major reason I play Netrunner instead, where your action economy can be spent on draw. You might have weak turns, but never non-turns.) Given the huge cardpool, there's no real way to "fix" MtG that couldn'…

I don't play any IRL magic but I know it can be hard to "fix" and maybe isn't broken. Casually those rules would probably be good house rules to balance play, though even small changes like this could change balance and lean all decks towards exploiting the rule

to point, your land for draw is kinda implemented with trade routes https://gatherer.wizards.com/9ED/en-us/108/trade-routes

And that has an additional mana cost to balance it (though it does have additional bonus). So you could kinda say "everyone gets trade-routes already in play" but like any "free card" fix does it simply skew deckbuilding into a new "broken" ?

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#97

Post by belval »

jwatte wrote: post #90
belval wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively you give everyone a free mulligan and if they decide to start with My issue with guaranteed lands is that they remove the randomness of some lands. I am not guaranteed to get my "no maximum hand size" land and my rogue passage to make my creature unblockable in a typical game of commander. I have to plan for it by using stuff like expedition map.

Drafting last Friday, my first hand was zero lands, my second hand was one land, my third hand (bottoming two) had three lands. However, I then kept drawing four-drop spells and no more lands for 8 turns. So is it "on me?" Or is it just that the game just is high variance?

Free mulligan means on your third hand you would only bottom 1, not 2.

Besides, with a 37 lands commander deck, the chances that in 4 hands (if your limit is bottoming 2, 5 cards in hand) starts getting low. Around 1 in 10 and that's ignoring mana rocks (2 lands + 1 mana rock) which probably brings it much closer to 1 in 14+.

If you add the chances of more than 4 lands (also fairly undesirable) your odds of a bad forced hand climb to 1 in 7, which is still pretty far from the 50% chance the original post is talking about.

Without the free mulligan you would be at 1 in 4, which is why I said free mulligan is the way to go.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#98

Post by butlike »

moate wrote: post #65
butlike wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "land for turn" concept is genius. I'd say only once though. If you draw another land, that's the nuts.

Well that's your "land for turn" not "replace playing a land". You can only play one land each turn, if other cards let you play extra lands...you can play extra lands!

I understand, I just meant it wouldn't be good to let the player cycle through their cards if they kept drawing a land with this rule specifically. You still play lands as normal if desired, and you can still play extra lands if other cards let you play extra lands.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#99

Post by rcxdude »

belval wrote: post #38
Pikamander2 wrote: post #24

> What is fun? > Here is a list of things that make a game of Magic The Gathering fun to us. > No Discard. It sucks to have no spells to play. > No Land destruction. It sucks to be unable to cast spells. I've always enjoyed these kinds of house rules that let you customize TCGs to your own liking. A while back, I bought a bulk box of common Pokemon cards and put together some decks where I limited the cards to basic…

> No Land destruction. It sucks to be unable to cast spells. I have yet to find someone actually running land destruction in their deck, it's such a hated mechanic.

There should probably be more nonbasic land hate, though. Lands decks can be pretty hard to interact with.

Re: Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

#100

Post by rcxdude »

AemusK wrote: post #54
adahn6 wrote: post #42

i wish this gave more details about the format! would love to know what the overall card pool ended up being, and which decks performed best. small plug but i run a format of magic of my own, a (non-Commander) multiplayer format that lets players play three games with side boarding. i think it's pretty cool, if anyone here wants to check it out! it's called Coalition, and we have rules and decks at https://mtgcoaliti…

I like the format, very cool idea. However, this rule: First player draw The first player does draw a card. Not sure if its a good idea? Gives first player a HUGE advantage.

That's actually vanilla mtg rule: multiplayer games have a free mulligan and first player draws. The advantage is smaller with more players and multiplayer formats tend to be self-levelling since people will target the player who's ahead. (There's a theory that a turn one sol ring in commander tends to reduce your odds of winning due to this effect).
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